The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I would normally dislike anyone who writes in a library book, but in this case, whoever it was made some good points about Barron's writing. Here are a few examples starting with the quote from the book and then the penciled in notes (though I sometimes elaborate on those notes to make them clearer for you):

"Silence spread like a riptide..." (p. 178)
What does that mean? Riptides don't spread.

"I might as well have stared down the drain pipe of a gun..." (p. 182)
What? You mean the barrel since guns don't have drains.

"His truck dwindles and is lost when I round the bend." (p. 182)
No, the view dwindles.

"Jacob was feeling enigmatic when he called..." (p. 199)
People don't "feel" enigmatic; they act or seem it. Also, how would the narrator know what Jacob was feeling?

I wanted to like this book. I wanted to like the title story since it's one of his most acclaimed, but none of this worked for me. Okay, with one exception: I did enjoy the first story, "Old Virginia," but everything else failed. Even if I liked a story such as "Parallax", the ending was so bad I suddenly hated everything that came before it for wasting my time.




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